Cicero

Climate news is a selection of international Internet news items related to climate issues and is updated daily. The news items reported here do not necessarily represent the views of CICERO, nor can CICERO be held responsible for the quality of their content.

Reuters: U.S. President Barack Obama and EU leaders meeting in Brussels this month will throw their combined weight behind tackling climate change, a document seen by Reuters says, in a show of developed world solidarity on the need for a new global deal.

msnbc: The last few weeks have been a rhetorical high-water mark for climate concern. The trouble is, they’ve also been a high-water mark for … water. Before you read the rest of this short essay, you might want to take 46 seconds to watch this video of a “king tide” path of destruction across the Marshall Islands in the Pacific last week. This is just the kind of thing starting to happen across the planet.

Euractiv: The EU's decarbonisation of its energy sector will only cut emissions by half the amount needed to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius in 2050, according to a business-as-usual scenario quietly released by the European Commission over the Christmas period.

NPR: European scientists were alarmed in 2008 when they discovered streams of methane bubbles erupting from the seafloor in Norway's high Arctic. This gas, which contributes to global warming, was apparently coming from methane ice on the seafloor. A follow-up study finds that methane bubble plumes at this location have probably been forming for a few thousand years, so they are not the result of human-induced climate change. But continued warming of ocean water can trigger more methane releases in the Arctic, with potentially serious consequences to the climate.

The Washington Post: Almost half of the Lower 48 will shiver under sub-zero wind chills Tuesday morning. Countless records will be set. Yet none of that means a thing about the existence of climate change, its severity or its consequences.

Reuters: A blast of Arctic air gripped the vast middle of the United States on Monday with the coldest temperatures in two decades causing at least four deaths, forcing businesses and schools to close and canceling thousands of flights.

Red Orbit: Species populations have to become stable in order for those creatures to expand their geographical ranges in response to global warming, according to new research published Sunday in the online edition of the journal Nature Climate Change.